


A Phoenix First Must Burn

by aliatori



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Character Study, Cordio if you super duper squint, Flashbacks, Gen, Magical Tattoos, but mostly Gladio being amazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 06:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17544413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliatori/pseuds/aliatori
Summary: Gladio might get knocked down, but he always gets back up again—and sometimes he has a little help.





	A Phoenix First Must Burn

**Author's Note:**

> A collaboration with [chiii](https://twitter.com/chi_peppers), originally written for the [Honor and Duty](https://twitter.com/HonorNDutyZine) zine.

Gladio’s perception has narrowed to two sensations: warm, liquid copper coating his mouth and the horde of daemons encroaching on his position.

Everything hurts like hell. A few cracked ribs and several massive lacerations from a Red Giant’s sword are causing Gladio to lose blood faster than his body can make it. His vision blurs, triplicating the faint glow of bombs in the distance, a morbid and deadly constellation replacing stars that refuse to shine. Gladio’s knees dig into soft earth, his upper body upright only by virtue of an indomitable will.

His mouth shapes Cor’s name without conscious thought, but Cor’s not here, his presence needed on a seperate front of Lestallum’s defense. No one is here, no one except the daemons Gladio’s supposed to be killing, chittering maws and slithering bodies approaching as inevitably as the tide.

Gladio’s no stranger to the brink of death. He and Death were practically cribmates, his life promised to it before he ever had the words to speak the promise himself. He’s stared it in the face countless times, laughed at it until he was breathless, and traced the shape of it with his calloused hands. Death is an intimate promise, one Gladio knows will be fulfilled eventually, and with any luck, fulfilled on behalf of his king.

Except… he’s facing it now. Death’s hands, cold and unfeeling, plumb the depths of Gladio’s chest, searching for his heart, its spindly claws trying their best to squeeze it to a stop.

It’s not gonna happen. Not if Gladio has anything to say about it.

A pack of mindflayers floats towards him, bearded tentacles coiling and uncoiling in stop motion, beady eyes locked on his prone form. Gladio tries to move but his limbs disobey the commands he’s trying to give them. He gropes at the front pocket of his jacket, his fingers thick and clumsy, before finally managing to clutch the delicate, vibrant feathers of a Phoenix Down between them. As the daemons cluster, close enough to saturate the air with the smell of rotten, musty decay, he forms a fist around the searing hot feathers.

Time slows, its passage so imperceptible that Gladio wonders, dazed and delirious with pain, if time has stopped altogether.

_For a moment—for a lifetime, for an eternity—he’s not bleeding out on a withering meadow in the World of Ruin, not succumbing to mortal wounds. Gladio is back in the Citadel, his father giving him a stern smile as he towers above Gladio in the sparring ring, authoritative and kind in equal measure._

_“Get up, Gladio.”_

With a blink, he’s on the field again, tasting iron and groping for his sword, struggling to find purchase for his swaying body.

As unconsciousness looms, his eyes drift closed.

 _“I can’t.” It’s the first and last time Gladio utters those words, but he means them. He thinks he has at least three fractures, and swathes of deep purple bruising mottles the skin beneath his burgeoning tattoo. It’s the hardest training session Clarus_ or _Cor have ever put him through._

_“Can’t…” Clarus begins, extending a hand down to Gladio where he’s sprawled on the mats, “isn’t in the Amicitia vocabulary. Get up.”_

A breath jettisons Gladio to the present and he realizes, sluggishly, that he never took hold of the Phoenix Down. An ethereal glow emanates from the stark lines of his tattoo, gentle white in the endless night of the Scourge, and the pressure of a hand clasping Gladio’s shoulder is as real as anything he’s ever felt.

An exhale sends him spiraling into memory.

_Gladio pulls himself up by his father’s hand, ignoring the screaming pain reverberating through his limbs with every motion. He grits his teeth, huffs a few harsh breaths through his nose, and turns his attention to his father._

_The last thing he expects is Clarus to enfold him in a tight hug, but once Clarus dismisses his claymore to the armiger, that’s exactly what he does._

_“No matter how hard things get, no matter how dire the situation…” Clarus says quietly, hand thumping a steady rhythm against Gladio’s back, “trust in yourself. And if you can’t trust in yourself… believe in who you are. You are an Amicitia.”_

When Gladio returns to the present, he’s not alone.

Clarus—or a facsimile of Clarus, a spectral outline against the pitch black landscape—stands with his back to Gladio’s. One hand holds up Gladio’s greatsword by the hilt and the other offers the Phoenix Down to Gladio’s waiting fingers. The orange-red glow of the curative bursts and sends particles of light scintillating around them, like glittering embers floating on the wind. Noct may be gone (for now), but not all magic went with him, and a burning wave of rejuvenation begins to roll through Gladio, incinerating his agony in pure, clean fire.

The glow of Clarus’ form matches the light issuing from Gladio’s tattoo, and he knows in a way that has nothing to do with knowledge that this is magic. His father is substantial and insubstantial in turns, both real and a beloved, macabre ghost, but one fact remains: he is tangible, as tangible as Gladio’s renewed vigor to fight.

“Get up, Gladio.” A smile—no, a grin, Gladio came by his confidence honestly—accompanies the words. “I’m with you.”

Gladio’s lips twist into the same triumphant grin. Like father, like son. Gladio chose feathers for his tattoo in case of a moment like this, a moment he’d hoped would never come to pass, when he’d be asked to spend the coin of his life too early. He’s given a hundred different explanations for his tattoo, but the truth of it is here, in the feathers of life eternal, of his birthright brought to bear. But Gladio has no time to question this magic, no time to wonder if he’s already gone and imagining the whole thing in the afterlife, another cruel joke of the Astrals.

There’s only the fight.

His smirk transforms into a wild, ferocious grin as he springs into action, wounds healed, injuries forgotten. The lethal, comforting weight of Gladio’s greatsword becomes a steel reckoning in his hands; he cleaves four mindflayers in half without a second thought, sending black ichor spraying in all directions. Clarus covers his flank, wielding his own weapon with a visceral prowess. Gladio catches a glimpse of dazzling white light in his peripheral vision, a holy flash of power that echoes along the lines inked in his skin.

Gladio knows he has never truly been alone, but now… he _sees_ it, _feels_ it in his father’s presence from beyond the realm of mortals.

Between Gladio’s physical form and Clarus’ spectral one, anchored to reality in Gladio’s own flesh and blood, they fell countless daemons. Jubilation fills Gladio’s spirit. If he cannot be the Shield of the King, he will be the Shield of the People, and each monster he and his father cut down serves as a testament to that oath. He and Clarus rend the Red Giant in two, swords of metal and light parting the daemon’s flesh with all the finesse of a screaming whisper. Gladio is alive, alive, _alive_ , more alive than he’s ever been, his skin aflame with a power beyond his comprehension.

Eventually, the daemons are gone, reduced to ash and ichor. The adrenaline subsides from Gladio’s veins, and with it, the esoteric magic brought on by his brush with an early death.

He locks eyes with his father’s spirit, panting, struggling to catch a breath he should have never gotten the chance to take, his tattoo incandescent in the dark. “Has this… have _you_ always been with me?”

With a habitual, heartbreaking gesture, the ghostly Clarus dismisses his sword. He stands less than an arm’s length away from Gladio, tethered to him, his features as detailed in spirit as they were in life. “We are always with you, Gladio. The legacy of an Amicitia is eternal, and we stand ready to protect life from death.”

Gladio stares for a long moment, and then reaches out, his hand on his father’s shoulder, an imperfect copy of the touch that lifted him from the ashes, that brought him blazing back to life. “I… what is this? Will I see you again?”

“Perhaps.” Clarus’ smile is knowing and solemn. “But I hope not.”

Before Gladio can speak again, Clarus’ form vanishes in a second shower of sparkling light. Gladio’s tattoo dims, fading to the ordinary black of ink on skin, and Gladio has a thousand more questions than answers.

As he looks into the distance and sees the signs of distant struggle, he thinks of all the people who depend on him—Noct, Cor, Ignis, Iris, Prompto, and countless others—and relinquishes his questions into the ether. Gladio’s life may not belong to him, not completely, but death can— _will_ —wait as long as it needs to.

After all, he’s an Amicitia, and he has a legacy to uphold.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, kudos and comments are greatly appreciated if you enjoyed. <3 Come find me over on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/AliatoriEra) to chat.


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